Poland

The American toy retailer Toys"R"Us has announced the launch of an ecommerce site in Poland, adding to its growing portfolio of online stores all over the world. Toys"R"Us already has eight physical stores and the web store will extends the brand’s reach to more Polish consumers.

UPS has announced the expansion of UPS My Choice and the UPS Access Point network to 15 additional countries, including 12 in Europe. With these two services, online shoppers and global retailers have new personalized solutions to manage residential package deliveries.

Wrangler has some big plans for this fall: it will launch an online store in ten European countries as well as launch a campaign with Finnish racing driver Kimi Raikkönen to boost sales. At the end of this year, Wrangler's online has to available in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland. France and Belgium will follow later.

The ecommerce industry in Poland grew by 25 percent in 2013. It was worth 26 billion Polish zloty, or 6.3 billion euros, last year and is expected to grow to more than 22 billion euros in 2020. This is equal to a compound annual growth rate of approximately 19 percent. This is apparent from a study by market researcher PMR.

Poczta Polska, called Polish Post in English, is launching a new solution for ecommerce shipping, combining shipping with banking, insurance and digital services. The state-owned firm handled about one in three ecommerce shipments in Poland last year. By launching a new shipping solution, Polish Post wants to take advantage of the predicted fast growth of the ecommerce sector.

Facebook is a very popular social network amongst European online retailers. Except for the United Kingdom, where online retailers are more active on Twitter. But Twitter is however still less popular in the UK than in other countries like Germany or Spain. These two countries have the most social media savvy online retailers, as 90% of them are on Facebook and 80% are on Twitter.

As is common nowadays in almost all developed countries, Polish internet users also don’t limit themselves to a PC when making a purchase online. There is even one in every 25 users who has at least once done some online shopping using their e-book reader! Let’s have a look at the way Polish internet users are shopping online these days.

PierreRiu.com launched only two weeks ago and the luxury fashion online store has already launched in Poland, Italy and Germany. And it's not like inhabitants from other European countries have to suffer as PierreRiu.com operates in all European Union countries. The buy & sell platform enables users to buy and sell luxury clothes and accessories online.

Of all Polish internet users, 24 percent do their grocery shopping online. This number indicates a growing popularity among Polish shoppers as two years ago only 8 percent of the internet users declared they had some experience with online grocery shopping. Last year this number grew to 13 percent.

Poland is one of Europe's fastest growing ecommerce markets and it's also a very strategic geographical location for those who would like to expand further into the Eastern European market. Software development company Dotcom River took a very good look at the ecommerce market in Poland and released a study, of which we'll show the most important results.

In the United Kingdom there are recently several activities employed and online platforms launched aimed at boosting trade with Central and Eastern Europe. A new UK-based ecommerce site for example aims to alert local companies about business opportunities in Romania, while another initiative is focused on selling British food online in Poland.

Poland may be the fastest-growing ecommerce market in the European Union, it still has a very low conversion rate. And among those internet users who actually do drop items in their virtual shopping cart, a strong majority of 67 percent leave the store without ever completing the transaction.

With an average growth rate of 19% in 2012 the ecommerce industry in Central Europe was growing almost as hard as the European average, which is 19.9%. The region's ecommerce market was worth 75.9 billion euros in 2012, but it's expected to have grown to 93.3 billion euros last year, which comes down to an increase of 23% in 2013.

The ecommerce industry in Poland will probably be worth more than 30 billion Polish zloty, ie 7.17 billion euros, this year. At the moment its total sales are at about 25 billion Polish zloty, or 5.9 billion euros. The local ecommerce market is growing rapidly and it’s unlike to slow down this year.

PKO Banks Polsi and EVO Payments International are forming a long-term strategic alliance. Payment service provider EVO Payments will acquire a 66 percent interest in PKO's merchant acquiring business eService. The two companies will also establish a 20 year alliance under which both parties will continue to work together to grow further eService's business within Europe.